It just screams potential, doesn’t it?

I want to live in a house like the one YaYa drew.

And have a tree like hers growing in my yard.

Leafy likes the potential of chalk, too.

He loves to show off his work.

And I love to see it. I’m his biggest fan; his drawings are so whimsical and lovely.

Solo, on the other hand, is all: If I can’t eat it, I don’t want it!  Just take it, already.

We’ll give him time.

Dear Agent,

I have a super fantastic book that I wrote, and I think it will make us both rich and famous! LOL!  There are a few reasons that I think this.

1. Because you are totally awesome, obviously, I read your website and it sounds like you are the most awesome person on the planet! LOL!

2. Because my husband really likes the book.  He told me he couldn’t put it down. And you should know that my husband isn’t the type of husband that would say that it was good just because I wrote it.  He’s actually a really picky person.  Really picky, and he’s totally honest, too. So if he says he likes something, HE REALLY LIKES IT! LOL!  For example, when we were trying to pick a title, he told me that if I said the word “landscape” one more time, he was going to throw me out the door. Landscape. Landscaaaaape. Sounds good to me, but I trust my husband!  Did I mention that he’s in this really cool band?

Anyways,

3. Because my friend Renee likes it and sometimes she calls me to read a line she really likes to me, and then I’m all, “Why did you like it?” because I really like to talk about it.  I’m like that with writing, but not with cooking, because when I cook and people like it, I’m all embarrassed and stuff. And I made a cake the other day and people liked it and one person said I should totally start a cake business, and it was SO EMBARRASSING.  But I like it when Renee reads paragraphs that she likes to me.

What have I been doing for the last few years?  Well…. I’ve been doing lots of stuff, like cooking (I already said that) and sometimes I go for a scooter ride in the jungle, and I have this blog that’s just amazing, you should totally read it, and I take care of my kids and then sometimes I write down funny things they say!  I read all the time! And I do a lot of laundry. I also homeschool my kids. And I know a lot of people from all around the world.

Is that a good biography?

Okay, so… think about it. Let me know in the next day or so, because this offer’s hot and you’d better jump on it! LOL!

All my love,

Rachel xoxoxoxo

A while ago, when I went to the market, I took my camera along and took just a few shots of the thousands I could have taken.  One thing about India- it’s very populated. (I realize that’s terrible grammar.) Populated with people yes, but also with small businesses.  One woman selling dried fish, another selling parsnips, and only parsnips!  As one shop owner explained to me, it’s why India is doing okay during the recession. Teeny tiny businesses and all the support that goes toward them.

Anyways. This is one corner of the market.

This lady is buying the essentials. Lemons, garlic, ginger…

Mmmm. Vegetables. That’s a nice tower of cauliflower that you have there, sir. I also spot some nice dill in the foreground.

Sweet potatoes!  Renee is a little worked up over sweet potatoes.  She’ll let you know, too. She spent six hours preparing the sweet potatoes on Christmas Eve.  I think my title of this photo is sweet potatoes and spring onions, but now I see they are parsnips.  Silly me!

These are some scary walking one eyed babies. Very scary.

Piles of glass bangles.  I want some, but I’m always overwhelmed by the choices.

Textiles. Saris.

Displaying the sari. I could never wear that green, but of course dark skinned people can wear whatever they want.

I told you about steel shops.  They’re addictive, all those piles of tiffins and cups and bowls of every shape and size.

This lady is thinking, finish taking the photo and take these roses already!

This is the shop that made my oven for me.I really love it. You can buy anything here.

A sweet shop. These guys wanted me to take a photo, and I’m supposed to take them a print.

Snacks.  Spicy snacks.

And last but not least. Undies! Right next to the chillies. Things are as they should be.

It is 5:00 in the evening here. The light is getting softer, the wind is picking up, like it does in the evenings at this time of year. I am on our rooftop, looking at red stones and multicolored glass panes, watching the wind move the coconut fronds.  A man in the village is getting married tomorrow, and the tape of wedding music has begun its long loop.

I’ve been on the rooftop since early morning. Sending out query letters, my self-confidence dying a little more with each click of the “send” button. Did I mention that I finished the book on my writing vacation?  And did I mention that I’ve been home for two weeks?  Just in case you’re thinking that I’m on a really really long vacation. But today is my writing day and instead of writing, I’m, well, beginning my journey to publication. I want you to read the book.

I’m writing now, and it’s feeding me. The wind in the leaves feeds me, the breath of God feeds me, hanging laundry on the line feeds me, and writing feeds me. Also, finding treasures on the shore, a scooter ride through the jungle, and cooking good food.

I’m nobody important, that’s what I feel when I look through all the agency websites. But that’s what I find to be beautiful about life, that we’re nobody important, just small, lovely people who extend a hand of welcome to one another. My book is about small, lovely people, my life is full of small, lovely people, and everyday I meet another person who is fascinating and insightful and nobody important at all.

Kid A, who barely acknowledges that he missed me when I went away, had his own way of letting me know he was glad I was back. Almost as soon as he saw me, he asked if I would like to help him and YaYa build their new invention.

It’s a bacteria smasher.  The big stick person is Chinua, and the little stick person is Kid A.  They’re there to show the scale.

Inviting me to help him build it was his way of welcoming me home. Of telling me that I was important. Every little frond, every little brick, every pane of glass. Every small trouble, every word, every little blogger, every one of our long, tiring, beauty-filled days.

Each day is pulled along into the next by the tendons.. I shake myself awake in the morning, get up, start skating on marble, throwing oatmeal into pots and draping clothes on their fragile fibers on the clotheslines.

In other words, we are busy.

I was very touched by my mother’s confidence in me in the comment section of the last post. “Did you make that boat?” she asked.

She asked. Although I have never to her knowledge constructed a boat. No time like the present! Perhaps Rae has taken up boat crafting! she thought tenderly. And why not?  Maybe I will.

No, the boat was one of these:

They are traditional Goan fishing boats, made of mango wood, and built with a sewing method and wood pegs. The technique is probably over a thousand years old.

It was a treat to be out in one.

Those are some huts.

I was headed out on a dolphin trip; a beautifully touristy event that I have never taken part in before. But when I was on my writing vacation, and a man approached me in the evening on the beach, asking if I wanted to go, I thought- why not?

So I arrived and the two fishermen who took me out pushed the boat into the water. I stood around looking helpless, until it was time to jump in. I didn’t want the boat to land on my foot or their feet or something.

The kids and I have learned that those wooden things are very similar to what they built the pyramids with. Although I think the Egyptian ones rolled. I’m not sure. Rolling ones would be hard in the sand, I think.

Fascinating boat detail:

The sun came up. (I had to meet them at the boat before sunrise.)

“Over there!” he cried!  “Dolphins!”

They kept laughing at me because I was missing the jumping dolphins. I finally saw a couple, but I didn’t get any pictures.

Just pictures like this:

And this:

You just can’t stop staring, though.  They’re just so beautiful.

Wait, here’s our guy again.

Let’s see another picture of him.

When I went to take the picture of them, they got very serious. This is the Goan Fisherman Serious Picture Face. As though they hadn’t been mocking me the whole time. “Eleven jumping dolphins and you only looking three times! Ha!”

Oh. This is a big fishing boat.

And these are some cool rocks.

And that’s all. Dolphin trips. Not only for people who can spot dolphins!

A lot of opinions on homeschooling!  It’s a loaded topic. (By the way, I don’t make a habit of jabbing people with forks.)

Indian people here are unused to the idea of homeschooling, but open to it. I am almost never challenged on it by the locals.

In many countries in Europe, it is illegal, so unheard of!  Their school system tends to be more thorough, and they don’t have the pioneer background of North Americans, which many people in a way feel that they can return to. Teaching our own kids, back to the multi grade school system, stuff like that.

The woman I met the other day had desire to listen.  She would ask me something and then interrupt when I tried to answer.  I think she felt that she was being honest, but for a first meeting, it felt incredibly judgemental to me, especially from someone who didn’t have kids. She appeared to believe that I haven’t thought about my decisions and the pros and cons of them at all.

I don’t have a very strong stance on homeschooling.  I have a strong stance on creative, interesting, education for kids.  I like literature based curriculum. I like a lot of imagination. I like Singapore Math. Weighing all the options (and boy do I weigh them.  I weigh them and weigh them and weigh them again. And then I measure them with a teeny tiny measuring stick that I carry in my wallet) I believe (and Chinua believes with me) that homeschooling is best for us right now. For our particular mix, at this particular time, in this particular village.

So there you are. And yes, socialization. Ahhhh, socialization. Well, I can say, that the only way I learned to socialize in school was to stay away from the mean kids and anyone who looked cool and hide in the art room. It’s a form of socialization, I guess.

My kids have friends from Italy and Germany and England and India. They have adult friends and kid friends. And they have each other.  They may complain to us about their upbringing, when they get older, but I think they will actually enter the adult world with grace and confidence and the ability to be flexible. I know that they have a voracious curiosity about the world around them, and that they can find Turkey and Israel and India and Germany and Russia and Canada and the U.S. and … well, you get the point… on an unmarked map, because they’ve learned that the shapes on maps are real places, and it might be possible for them to see them someday.  Kid A would like to be an explorer when he grows up. I’m not sure what he will explore, but… he has time to decide.

So there you go, my views on homeschooling. Maybe one day we will live where there is the school of our dreams, and I will say, “Off you go! Off you GO!  Get out of my hair and get someone else to teach you stuff!”  Or maybe I will teach them until college. Who knows?  We take it from year to year.  And I think for mothers that the feisty guilt demon is always gnawing away at your shoes, and you just need to put your fork in your pocket and kick that guilt thing in the head, like it deserves.

(I’m home, by the way. I have more to share about the writing vacation!  More to share!)

I’ve been up to my elbows in my book all day, and can’t bring myself to upload photos.  So I’ll tell you two secrets:

1. I love the smell of burning cow dung.  I really, really do.  Every time I whizz by it and smell it, I think aaaaahhhhh (a long sigh, not a scream) and then I think, that’s India.

2. If one more person that I’ve only known for two minutes castigates me for homeschooling my children and harangues me about their socialization (and I mean harangue, not express interest, or gently debate) I’m going to jab them in the chin with a fork and say “How’s that for socialization?”

There are limits.

I drove away from Panjim, the capital of Goa, this morning, on my scooter. In Panjim I walked around and took photos of buildings and a few people, I saw a movie in a theater (the last movie I saw in a theater was Mr Bean’s Holiday in B.C. in April of 2008) and I had a massage. It was beautiful. But I was ready to leave.

I drove for two and a half hours, and my bottom was numb when I got here. I drove through cashew forests which smelled heavenly because the cashew flowers are in bloom.  And I drove through forests of eucalyptus which were stunning and alien. I haven’t seen anything like them in North Goa.  I felt like I was back in California, except that I was on the left side of the road. I stopped completely at one point because a man was trying to tease me on the scooter, riding up beside me and staying there, trying to get me to look at him, speeding up when I sped up, slowing down when I slowed down.  I’ve had one man do that before, and it’s so dangerous. The only thing to do is either smash into him on my scooter (not a good idea) or stop at a market and wait for him to be really far away. I did the second.

Now I am at a small beach in the south, staying in a beach hut. A beach hut!  I can’t believe the luxury. It is made of coconut fronds and has a cow dung floor, behind one of the beach shack restaurants. I swam today, and read some, and edited three chapters. I walked up and down the beach a few times, climbing over the wonderful boulders at one end of the beach. I’m shrinking back a little at the prices of food.

It’s a part of Goa that the vacationers experience, a part that I haven’t, really, with my house and my homeschooling and my children.  I need the municipal market, I need things, I have appointments, I have a pretty firm schedule. But today I have only a backpack and a computer in a hut on the beach, and the comfortable knowledge that I will be with my family soon again. What a vacation. I’m a blessed girl.

Thank heaven it’s a working vacation.  I’d be so, so bored if I wasn’t working on the book.  It’s a writer’s dream, really, write for a couple of hours, then take a walk. Read for a while, then write again. Walk again. Go for a scooter ride. Do research on agents and what a book synopsis is.

The characters in my next book are banging around in my head. I have to finish this one, quick!  Although I’ll miss these folks, I really will.

PS: Reality check on the whole paradise thing: Last night after I wrote this there was a big fight in front of my hut.  A very angry British woman punched a very drunk British man and then screamed at him for a while, telling him he was an achoholic and he’d better stay the eff away from her friend. STAY THE EFF AWAY! And on and on.  A while went by and then they were dragging the very drunk man away to put him to bed somewhere and I heard a woman say, outside my hut, “But there’s shoes out here!”  I leapt out of bed and opened the door. “Oh! Sorry,” she said.

I should say!  Jeepers, can’t a woman get a little peace and quiet?

I am in the backpacker’s India of my late teens and early twenties, in a little guest house with plywood walls that are cracked and sagging. I am showering in cold water, standing over the squatty toilet, toweling off carefully.

When I got up this morning I hurried to the shower, hoping to be the first there. I didn’t need to worry.  Apparently my fellow backpackers aren’t up at 7:00 for the shower, not having jumped out of bed as soon as they opened their eyes and it was light.  I can’t help it!  I need to see the world, the sun is up and I am exploring.

I love this. I paid 50 rps extra to have two windows in my room. One is a little one about 18 x 24”, with a view of the roof of the building next door. I’m glad I paid the extra. The air was unbelievably fresh this morning. It is January, and the coolness off the river is delightful.

I had Indian breakfast at a little restaurant around the corner; bhaji parantha. Fried flat bread and a potato curry. Mosquitoes were biting my ankles and so I brought my legs up and crossed them on the seat (this is, after all, India) and later the owner of the establishment came by and rebuked me. “Put your legs down,” he said. “Sit properly.” I was quickly aware that I am no longer the venerated mother of four, queen of my chaotic household, drinking my espresso and cream amid fluttering limbs of people under eight. I am just your ordinary backpacker, a budget traveler, with unkempt hair (dreadlocks) and Nescafe in my cup. I have traded respect for a bit of peace and quiet for a few days. I notice how differently I am treated when I am alone. I don’t have the weight of my family in a country where family is everything.